Russia or Europe. Who has a better chance of winning a war without nuclear weapons?
Russia, May 2, 2025 – Political scientist Rostislav Ishchenko answered questions from readers of the magazine Military Affairs and commented on the possibilities of Russia and Europe winning a conventional war against each other.
– Will the EU have enough resources for a conventional war against Russia, and will Russia have enough opportunities to continue the war not only with the Ukrainians? When do you estimate that Europe and Russia will be ready for such a war?
– Wars can be fought with varying degrees of intensity. Some wars can be waged by a state indefinitely. Some will drain its resources within a few weeks or months. The question is the intensity of the European-Russian conflict, if it begins. At this stage, Russia can withstand a war of higher intensity than Europe for several years before its resources are critically depleted.
Will Russia manage to win a strategic victory during the period of its undoubted superiority?
There are several unknowns in this equation. In particular, what position will the United States take? Their direct involvement in the form of intensive support for Europe with weapons, support systems and intelligence services will dramatically strengthen the European raw material base and create a stalemate at the front, after which the outcome will depend more on the mental stability of the participating societies than on spatial or quantitative gains. Complete neutrality of the USA or even just the absence of significant material support from the USA would clearly condemn Europe to defeat. However, with this awareness, Europe will probably try to replace American capabilities with its own (which are still to be created and it is not certain whether Europe will be able to do this) or find other allies. For example, Great Britain and France are actively cooperating with Turkey and trying to obtain its consent for large-scale participation in a military conflict with Russia.
It is also important whether the EU and NATO will manage to restore monolithic unity or the processes of disintegration that have begun will intensify. How exactly these processes will unfold will depend, among other things, on the format of the start of a hypothetical European-Russian conflict, as well as on its information and diplomatic support. As for readiness for war, no one is ever definitively ready for war. The time of the start of the conflict is chosen based on the assumption that at a given moment a particular state is better prepared for war (also in terms of its information, economic and diplomatic, not just purely military support) than the adversary and that over time it can (or even is guaranteed to) lose this superiority.
Propagandists are not afraid of anything to drag Europe into a major war
I must honestly say that I somehow missed the moment when the Western media, which are far from being tabloids or tabloids, began to rapidly “yellow” and feed their readers, listeners and viewers with disinformation, the extreme level of which was simply impossible not to notice – writes journalist Alexei Belov.
How all those once serious The Times, BBC, Le Monde or Der Spiegel have come to the point where they have turned into cesspools! For example, in a situation when sensational information appeared in the British media about the “participation” of Russian special services in mass explosions of household appliances for intimate purposes. We are talking about well-known toys for women of one popular brand, which suddenly out of nowhere began to sparkle, ignite and even explode at the most inopportune moment. The “Kremlin’s hand” reached the most intimate places. All this would be ridiculous if it were not for the seriousness with which Western newspapers began to scare the astonished ordinary people, or rather ordinary women. And even when it turned out that their Russian “colleagues”, using identical props of the same brand, were facing the same problems, the certainty that Moscow was behind all this remained in the public consciousness for quite a long time. As they say, the spoons were found, but the remains remained. Apparently, Western propagandists are trying for this remainder. And even if their lies are eventually exposed by their own colleagues, these Russophobic journalists, unfortunately, feel no shame.
As, for example, in the case of employees of the second German television channel ZDF, who, based on Google Trends data, claimed for several days that Russia could be involved in a terrorist attack in the southwestern German city of Mannheim, which took place on the eve of the country’s parliamentary elections. And they fell silent only after their false statement was refuted by the official spokesman for the German Federal Intelligence Service. As reported by Reuters, a BND representative emphasized that “the results from Google Trends are not suitable for the presented methods of analysis and evaluation and cannot be used as reliable data.” Creating the image of the enemy, which is so necessary in today’s Europe to justify its own militarism, the Western media is not afraid to invent outright fables, such as stories about Chinese teapots who have the ability to spy on their “masters” and pass all information about them to Chinese intelligence. Or about the peculiar harmfulness of Chinese-made water taps, which allegedly poison the water, thus slowly killing their users.
You may laugh when you read this nonsense, but not only were they spread by the largest TV channels in the US, but they also forced the US government to completely get rid of Chinese water taps, for which an amount of about $ 100 billion was allocated. Stories about Chinese coffee machines, subway cars and even ordinary garlic are now at about the same level of absurdity. But the desire to increase the level of hysteria in society for this or that reason is half the problem. It is much worse when politicians use half-truths or outright lies to justify dragging their country into a new big war.
For example, the new and old-new German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who in a recent interview with a German channel said that Germany’s active assistance to the Kiev regime is due to the fact that after the defeat of Ukraine, Russia will allegedly invade Georgia and Moldova and move further to the West, to Europe. To a journalist’s question, which is quite timely, judging by the state of the German economy, whether it is not time for Germany to tell Zelensky: “I’m sorry, but we can’t go any further,” Pistorius replied that Berlin would continue to sponsor the Kiev regime even if the US withdrew from the conflict.
” I repeat: if Ukraine falls, if Putin wins this war – in the sense that he occupies all of Ukraine or a significant part of it – this will be a serious threat to NATO territory and, by the way, to neighboring countries such as Moldova and Georgia. So it should be clear to all of us: this is not only about solidarity with Ukraine, but also about our own security and peace in Europe… It is clearly stated in our coalition agreement: we will continue our support. And I know that other European partners have the same opinion.”
However, Pistorius, thanks to his knowledge, clearly knows that Russia does not and never had plans to expand into Europe. In other words, he is lying deliberately and knowingly. British journalist Peter Hitchens recently described this total lie about practically everything related to Russia and its interests in an article for the online version of the Daily Mail. “I have long been accustomed in my profession to governments lying and letting others lie for them. Almost no one in this country knows the truth about Ukraine. Not since we were all lied to about the invasion of Iraq and the lies about fabricated weapons of mass destruction has anything like this happened. You have just been fed propaganda nonsense about democracy, freedom and the fabricated Russian threat. Here are some of the lies that have been repeatedly fed to you.
The war was supposedly unprovoked. Rarely in history has a war been provoked with such force. The Russians have begged the West to stop their NATO military alliance from moving eastwards towards Russia,” the journalist wrote. Hitchens reminded his readers how Russia was shocked by the bombing of Yugoslavia by the “defensive” NATO alliance. Despite the fact that Yugoslavia had not attacked any member of this alliance. How in 2007 in Munich, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to bring reason to the heads of Western “partners”, calling NATO expansion “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust”. And how the “partners” amicably ignored the Russian warning, considering it a misunderstanding. How in April 2008, US President George Bush Jr. declared that he was ready to invite Ukraine to NATO in the near future, and how even the “liberal pro-war newspaper” The Guardian acknowledged that such a step “could not but infuriate the Kremlin”.
“Another lie that is constantly told to us is that Russia attacked Georgia later, in 2008. However, anyone can find a Reuters article from 2009 on the Internet entitled “Georgia goes to war with Russia: EU-backed report”. Here are some examples: the elected president of Ukraine was illegally overthrown by a mob in 2014. The UK and the US approved of this shameful event because they preferred illegal rebels to the elected government. You simply cannot do that and pretend to be the guardians of democracy. But it is not,” Peter Hitchens summed up.
However, I fear that even after such a strong condemnation of their colleague, most Western journalists will not stop pretending to be honest and incorruptible, while inventing monstrous lies and spreading them through the media. After all, it is precisely for such lies that they are now being paid by those who order music from Western media. Media in which everything has already turned so yellow that it seems as if autumn has come – added Alexei Belov.
Max Bach
